Africa Check won the 2019 Fact Forward Innovation Fund award for “What’s Crap on WhatsApp?,” a voice note show created in partnership with Volume to fight mis/disinformation spread on WhatsApp.

amandla.mobi recently turned 5 and released a video highlighting accomplishments from its community of over 250,000 people. 

Congratulations to BudgIT’s Uadamen Ilevbaoje and CODE’s Lucky Chambers Umezulike who were named to the list of 2019 Obama Foundation Leaders: Africa Programme, a year-long initiative to inspire, empower, and connect 200 emerging leaders from across Africa. CODE’s Follow the Money initiative, also won a 2019 United Nations SDG Action Award.

Through public records requests, the Center for Privacy and Technology at Georgetown Law uncovered that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials were scanning driver’s license photos using facial recognition technology. 

Change.org Argentina launched its platform 'Elecciones 2019' and was featured in one of Argentina's leading newspapers 'La Nación', which highlighted the project's momentum with petitions directed at the candidates who have gathered over 100,000 signatures. 

Chequeado launched Reverso, a new project which will fight misinformation ahead of the 2019 Elections in Argentina in partnership with 117 media operators in Argentina, including all national broadcasting channels.

Code for America launched their 2019 Community Fellowship Program, which will 
partner with seven local governments across the U.S. The program will closely integrate the fellows with its network of hyper-local brigades.

The Correspondent has hired Eliza Anyangwe as its first Managing Editor. 

Forbidden Stories launched Green Blood, an investigation into journalists who have been targeted for their stories on the environment. They also recently won the Special Award at European Press Prize for efforts to continue and publish the work of journalists facing threats, prison, or murder.

Iniciativa Latinoamericana de Datos Abierto (ILDA) played a pivotal role in the development of the Interamerican Open Data Program to Fight Corruption, recently announced by the OAS.

Solitary Voices, a new investigation from the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) revealed widespread misuse and overuse of solitary confinement in U.S. detention centers. ICIJ found that immigration authorities have used the practice to isolate thousands of the most vulnerable detainees for weeks and months at a time.

Katiba Institute had a big win in their court case in which they were supporting Lamu residents to prevent a planned $2 billion coal plant that would have had a negative impact on human and marine life in the area. 

Media Monitoring Africa released their report on the quality of media coverage during the 2019 elections in South Africa, and they received an honourable mention in the official election results ceremony for their role in ensuring free and fair elections.

Nieman Lab highlighted Membership Puzzle Project’s research and its funding of other news organisations’ experiments to implement membership.

After receiving more than 500 applications, New Media Ventures announced its 2019 Open Call Finalists. The 33 selected organisations include a range of frontline organising groups, progressive tech ventures, new media startups, and democracy infrastructure organizations.

The Open Contracting Partnership launched Open Contracting Lift, a new program offering support to contracting practitioners who are working to improve the quality of a public good, work, or service through contracting, and could use some expert and peer help. The competitive program offers 14 months of extensive, integrated assistance from technical experts and peers who’ve faced similar challenges. Apply by August 12.

The Brazilian Supreme Court recently ruled that homophobia is a crime after a joint campaign run by our storytelling grantee Quebrando o Tabú and LGBTQ+ rights organization AllOut. The campaign focused on producing and publishing digital stories about Brazilians who had been the victims of homophobia, as a mechanism to collect online signatures. Thanks to the wide reach of Quebrando o Tabú's social media channels, the campaign was able to collect 680,000 citizens' signatures calling on the Supreme Court to extend protections to the LGBTQ+ community.

Red en Defensa de los Derechos Digitales (R3D) won a case to access information about interventions to private communications, real-time geolocalisation, and personal data, including in cases deemed of 'public security'. This decision sets an important precedent in favor of transparency in Mexico.

Following a Freedom of Information request from SERAP, the federal high court in Lagos delivered a landmark judgment ordering the release of details of payments to all defaulting electricity contractors.

Unite Us partnered with Kaiser Permanente to launch Thrive Local, which will connect a curated network of local social services organisations with health care providers through Unite Us’ platform.